Pinole Valley High School in the East Bay already has one big claim to fame: two members of the rock band Green Day were students there before they made it big. Now the school is earning a reputation for a different type of art, as its fast-growing collection of outdoor murals is transforming the campus — and the lives of its students.

But to newcomers, Pinole Valley High doesn’t look much like a hotbed of artistic creativity. Half the campus is a building site. The other half is a sprawl of squat mobile buildings. Principal Kibby Kleiman says his students and staff are stuck in the temporary structures for at least five years while the school undergoes renovations.

A part of the Pinole Valley High School campus that isn’t yet completely adorned with art. (Photo: Chloe Veltman/KQED)

“Everything is in a portable,” Kleiman says. “My office is a portable. The bathrooms are portables. This book room, that library, are portable. There’s a multipurpose room that’s just kind of a bigger portable.”

When the school moved into the mobiles in 2014, Kleiman feared the uninspiring environment would lower morale, and even cause dropouts. Then art teacher Jan Barzottini came along, with bright ideas and a great sense of humor.

Art teacher Jan Barzottini (right) poses with recent grad Shaye Maxey. Maxey won a full ride scholarship to the Academy of Art University, partly for her work on the mural project. (Photo: Chloe Veltman/KQED)

“There’s one kid this year who calls me Miss Fettuccini,” Barzottini jokes. “He has a whole realm of Italian foods that he calls me.”

Where most of her colleagues and students saw nothing but cheaply-constructed, cookie-cutter portables with walls the color of sludge, Barzottini saw a big, open canvas. She recruited students to cover the brown facades with reproductions of famous works of art.

“You see Roy De Forest on the right, you see a glimpse of Jasper Johns on the left, and you’ve got Diego Rivera right next to you,” Barzottini says as we tour the campus, checking out the many student murals that adorn the mobile walls. “So every time you turn a corner, there should be something that catches your eye and either identifies where you are or adds a little bit of color to your day.”

Pinole Valley High students pose in front of their work. (Photo: Chloe Veltman/KQED)

Even though the students are working with fairly rudimentary tools — house paint, brushes and canvases made out of wooden boards — Barzottini is proud of the care they have taken to recreate the masterworks.

“This is Diego Rivera,” Barzottini says as we pause in front of a student reproduction of the artist’s painting depicting two girls washing their hair outdoors in front of a field of sunflowers. “A lot of different blending techniques to get all the ripples in their skirts.”

At first, Barzottini focused on 20th century masterworks because they’re bold, colorful and relatively easy to paint. “And that gave the kids confidence,” she says.

Student Jason Capuyan works on his mural — the cover art for Green Days 1994 album ‘Dookie’. (Photo: Chloe Veltman/KQED)

Soon the students started seeking inspiration outside the realm of traditional museum art.

When I visit Barzottini’s classroom, I chat with 18-year-old student Jason Capuyan as he painstakingly recreates the intricate cover art from Green Day’s 1994 album Dookie. It’s a tribute to his musical heroes. “I listen to them a lot,” Capuyan says.

Capuyan spends his lunch breaks working on his mural and loves how art is transforming the campus. “The environment is a little more vivid now because we have more murals and bright colors popping up,” Capuyan says.

Principal Kleiman says around 150 students have participated in the project, including students who don’t even take art class.

Pinole Valley High School grad Shaye Maxey poses with her mural, a reproduction of Modigliani’s ‘Alice’. (Photo: Chloe Veltman/KQED)

One recent grad, Shaye Maxey, won a full ride scholarship to San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, partly as a result of her take on “Alice,” a famous 1915 portrait of a young girl by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.

“This mural made me feel like I could accomplish a lot more than I thought I could beforehand,” Maxey says.

And in the ultimate sign of teen approval, students are snapping selfies in front of the murals and sharing them on Instagram.

Author

Chloe Veltman

Chloe Veltman covers arts and culture for KQED. Prior to joining the organization, she launched and led the arts bureau at Colorado Public Radio, was the Bay Area’s culture columnist for the New York Times, and was also the founder, host and executive producer of VoiceBox, a national award-winning weekly podcast/radio show and live events series all about the human voice. Chloe is the recipient of numerous prizes, grants and fellowships including both the John S Knight Journalism Fellowship and Humanities Center Fellowship at Stanford University, the Sundance Arts Writing Fellowship and a Library of Congress Research Fellowship. She is the author of the book “On Acting” and a guest lecturer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She holds a BA in english literature from King’s College, Cambridge, and a Masters in Dramaturgy from the Central School of Speech and Drama/Harvard Institute for Advanced Theater Training.

About KQED

Support is also provided by Yogen and Peggy Dalal, Diane B. Wilsey, the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Helen Sarah Steyer, the William and Gretchen Kimball Fund, and the members of KQED